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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Mendacity as a Virtue

Here is another sign that our society is collapsing: Mendacity is now proclaimed as a virtue. Mendacity is defined as the tendency to lie, or lying itself. People have always lied, throughout history. For much of this nation’s history, deliberate deceit has been considered a bad thing. In modern America, it is now considered a virtue. Oh, not by everyone, just by the leaders and shapers of public opinion (such as the media) and such. Mendacity is a good thing.

It was probably growing for a long time unnoticed. Every politician knows that a little deceit is a powerful campaign tool. It began to flower when Bill Clinton was president. When he boldly lied about his relations with that female intern, the media gushed over how well he lied and how useful a lie could be. Articles even appeared in various publications about how lying was good, useful, profitable, and healthy at times.

Today, politicians, particularly the president, can openly and boldly say things that are easily demonstrable as lies not only without being challenged on the deceit, but being applauded for saying that which is false as though it were true. Advocates for various political agendas can, if the goal is “politically correct”, openly say things that are false to advance their agenda without fear of being challenged. Their patent lies will be cited, quoted, and rehearsed by the media and others who would endorse their cause. Challenging the veracity of such obvious deception is attacked as an assault on the speaker, or adherence to outdated ideas, or *gasp!* fundamentalism of some sort.

Public policy is now being formulated on the basis of mendacity. The ten percent of the population that pays eighty percent of the taxes paid in this country are still not paying their “fair share”. The fifty percent of the population who pay less than five percent of the taxes are overburdened. The mentally ill individual that misuses a firearm tragically is evidence that the average, law-abiding citizen should have his or her second amendment rights curtailed. The cooling of the earth over the last two decades is proof of “global warming”. The dramatic increase in the world population of polar bears is evidence that they are endangered. The erosion of our economy, with higher unemployment, fewer (by millions) in the workforce, and a deep decline in average incomes in our nation is cited as evidence of nearly robust recovery from a recession even though marked by failures of businesses and banks on a scale not seen in America in over fifty years. And the massive increase in the deficit of this nation is proof that we are not spending too much, . . . somehow.

Politicians lie to get elected and then lie to explain their nearly inexplicable actions. Media personalities misrepresent the positions of politicians and other public figures – and their own statements of the past – depending on whether they wish to advance or hinder the work of those public figures about which they report. What is a virtue for one is a sin for another. The double standard is breath-taking. Criminal activity by some hardly merits mention, but taking a sip of water during a speech is proof of some cosmic failure in another. Even when they acknowledge a lie, they may often marvel at how effective it has been, without correcting it or decrying the deceit. For such people, mendacity is a virtue to be admired rather than a failure or character flaw.

I could expand this post by a discussion of false doctrine and unfaithful church practices that are being advanced, but it would make this post much longer. Suffice it to say that those who are charged with defending the truth often do not, and those who should know better follow the crowd rather than the Lord in their teachings. There are some faithful, but far too few. This is the one place where deceit is to be expected. The Lord promised us that it would be so. It is not a good thing, but it is a mark of the times and of the truth of the prophecies that such things (and such people) would happen.

No society can stand for long without reality as its foundation. No political system can endure the embrace of the lie for long. The Church alone can stand in such an environment, and that only because God is control and will not allow His Church to disappear completely. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Deceit will inevitably destroy such a society, however, because no one will know what to stand for, or where true value lies. Perhaps that is the reason for the adoption of mendacity as a virtue. The goal may well be the dissolution of our nation as it exists and the establishment of something other. If things don’t change, I suspect the great American experiment with freedom and democratic ideals is over, and although it was a great success, it has been manipulated into failure in the end.